Which is better for your business – Google Adwords or Facebook ads?

Which is better for your business – Google Adwords or Facebook ads?

Both Facebook and Google are in the top five tech companies in the world. They both offer advertising solutions for businesses. So, should you focus your advertising spend on Google or Facebook?

Google Adwords

In its most basic form, Google is a search engine. You know those ads that pop up at the top of Google when you search for something online? They’re hosted by the Google ad platform, Adwords.

Benefits of Google Adwords

Google processes 40,000 search queries every second. That’s about 150,000 worldwide Google searches by the time you finish reading this sentence. That’s a whole lot of people searching for answers online. So what if people are looking for a solution that your brand can provide, but your website is getting lost among the millions of other businesses offering a similar solution? Running Adwords campaigns can help bring your website and brand front of view for people searching for what you have to offer.

Facebook ads

Facebook is a social media site. Facebook ads are the ones that pop up either on your News Feed or along the right hand side of your browser when you’re scrolling through the platform on desktop.

Benefits of Facebook ads

Facebook’s advertising power is in its user data. The abundant amount of data that Facebook has on its users enables advertisers to target very specific audiences depending on interests, demographics and user behaviour. Facebook also offers a vast array of ad types to cater for different advertising objectives. Some of the most common ones are lead ads, video ads and canvas ads.

Both companies have branched out a bit when it comes to their ad types. For instance, Google owns DFP, an adserver which hosts ads on all different types of websites, while Facebook has launched Audience Network, an adserver which does much the same. For this article we’ll look at Adwords and Facebook ads only.

The important difference between Google Adwords and Facebook ads

The most distinct difference between Adwords and Facebook ads is that Google Adwords campaigns provide a solution for consumers who are looking to engage with your offering. Facebook ads on the other hand, provide a solution to consumers who might not yet realise that they want to engage with your offering. The distinction here is important. You probably wouldn’t use Google Adwords to build brand awareness, while we could argue that leads gained through Google search may be more valuable than leads gained through Facebook ads.

The ad platform you decide to use will depend entirely on what your advertising objectives are. To get the best results out of your advertising efforts, it’s not about choosing one or the other. The best way to get results is to have a clear objective, develop a great ad, and test until you know what works best for you.

Both Facebook and Google can help advertisers meet important marketing objectives in a cost effective way. So if you’ve got some marketing budget to spread, using both platforms to achieve different advertising objectives is a great way to see real results. In order to keep ad costs at a minimum, a bit of knowledge on each of the ad platforms is required. When advertising on Facebook for instance, your ad costs could skyrocket if your creative is poor and targeting is unfocused. The same goes for Google Adwords if your keywords are too broad or if they’re irrelevant to your landing page.

Before you start a new campaign with either of these platforms, it is vital to know what your specific objectives are. If you know what your advertising goals are, you’ll be able to align them with the type of advertising that is right for you.